Dear HCN,
I read Hal Herring’s
review of the documentary, Killing Coyote, in
the July 31 issue of High Country News with
great interest. So much so, in fact, that I bought a copy of the
video. Mr. Herring describes a visit by Doug Hawes-Davis to the
Logan Field Station of the National Wildlife Research Center. He
trumpets the visit as: “the first (by) journalists to film the
research facilities of Wildlife Services and interview the
veterinarians and exterminators who devote their lives to
destroying coyotes.” He goes on to describe purported research
activities as: “what Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil”
… tightly bound coyotes being injected with the latest birth
control potions, or being dragged from their pens by people who
look like you and me.” Mr. Herring also quotes one Wildlife
Services staffer (me, as it turns out) as saying: “We fail a lot
… but that doesn’t mean we are going to stop.”
To say the least, I was fascinated. What a
macabre film and what a patently bizarre review! Hawes-Davis’ crew
was only one of many to film the Logan Field Station during the
summer of 1999. Just prior to Hawes-Davis’ visit to Logan, an NBC
Nightly News crew collected extensive footage for a story on the
range expansion of coyotes into the Eastern United States. In fact,
film shot by the NBC crew was used by Hawes-Davis to portray “…
tightly bound coyotes being injected with the latest birth control
potion,” after being “… dragged from its pen.”
In fact, the coyote on film was terrified. He
and several of his mates were victims of an attack by animal-rights
activists the day prior to the NBC visit. The incident was reported
to the FBI and extensively covered the following week in the
Logan Herald Journal (Aug. 5,
1999).
The activists used a high-pressure water
hose to force hand-raised animals from their pens, and then
attempted to start a range fire which, if successful, might have
damaged our research building, and surely would have burned many of
our animals in their pens. The male in question had an extensively
injured foot, and the “birth control potion” described by Mr.
Herring was actually a sedative so that we could examine the
animal. Several other animals “liberated” in the attack were so
seriously hurt that they had to be put to sleep by the caring
people who had raised them from pups.
To
describe film of animals injured by terrorists in the name of
nonviolence and animal rights is obscene, and to use it to accuse
Wildlife Services of cruelty is burlesque. As Hawes-Davis knew –
because we told him and because we gave him our publication list –
the Logan research facility only conducts investigations into
nonlethal methods of predator management. And that, by the way, was
what my comment on film referred to, i.e., “…We fail a lot (in
the development of new non-lethal methods), but that doesn’t mean
we are going to stop.”
To condone gross
misrepresentations of this kind, or even to acquiesce in their
distribution, is unethical, immoral and wrong. For anyone that
cares about the American West, our wildlife, and the preservation
of our wild lands, this film and High Country News’
review of it are, in my mind, clearer examples of “…
the banality of evil” than anything captured by Hawes-Davis on
film.
Russ
Mason
Logan, Utah
Russ Mason, leader of Wildlife Services’ research station in Logan, Utah, is a professor of fisheries and wildlife, biology, and psychology at Utah State University and a professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania. His comments do not represent an official government position.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline An outrageous review.
Read More
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
